Seán Moran talks to co-manager Art McRory about the county's chance to show their wares in Croke Park

The unapproved road has led Tyrone to Croke Park more reliably than the conventional route they travelled 12 months ago. Ulster champions for the first time in five seasons, the county ended up drawing Derry - whom they had already beaten in Ulster - in the All-Ireland quarter-finals. There they bowed out, never having left Clones all season.

A few months previously, Tyrone might have featured in the league final at Croke Park but for the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that quarantined them out of the semi-finals.

This spring they went by the book and won the county's first league, only for the requirements of the new pitch once more to shut the doors of headquarters on them. And so they played a league final in - Clones.

Tomorrow afternoon the wait is over and Tyrone will be back in Croke Park for the first time since Meath unexpectedly trumped them in the 1996 All-Ireland semi-final. In that time, the Canal End terrace, the old Hogan Stand and the bumpy old surface have all disappeared, but there will be one recognisable feature on the side of the pitch.

Tyrone joint-manager Art McRory is three years into his latest stint with the county, having brought the county to two All-Ireland finals and five (now six) Ulster titles, the first in 1984. This year's team is a slight variation on last year's, with some new faces in defence and positional changes up front.

"Five of the team have never played in Croke Park before," he says about the players who tomorrow face Sligo in round four of the All-Ireland qualifier series.

This is a surprising number given the county's recent success at minor level (two All-Irelands in the past four years). Do the management find success at a young age dilutes enthusiasm later on?

"Not really. I haven't noticed that. Obviously early achievement is a problem to some mentalities, but we pick players purely on their current form, not what they might have done in the past."

As is almost usual in the county, he and Eugene McKenna have that under-age success as a platform, but, as is equally usual, lack physical impact around the field. Yet they overcame that deficiency against Derry in the last qualifier round and in the process gave an attacking display that was at times stunning.

McRory is, however, dismissive of the theory that the new Croke Park pitch will benefit his lively forwards, much as it has Dublin's similarly slight attack.

"There's a lot of hype about the new pitch. It's still only about the same size as Clones, maybe one or two yards wider and at most a yard longer."

He also feels that his players won't find the surface as sapping as has been reported by Leinster teams. "In Ulster, there's a lot of sand-based, Prunty pitches. We're not used to training on soft ground and hope that Croke Park will be something similar."

Since losing to Armagh in the Ulster first round replay, Tyrone have had a quiet enough progression to this stage. Admittedly, the match against Derry was high-profile and high-tension, but the opening qualifiers against Wexford and Leitrim were not summit meetings, despite Wexford's typically competitive display.

"It's been a great way of bringing on a team," says McRory, "an excellent experience. We have been able to get a number of players on the park because of the odd injury or the odd loss of form. That has helped keep the panel happy. It's also been great to get out of Ulster and play teams with different styles from around the country."

Still, he has reservations about the future of the qualifier series. His comments carry a particular weight, as he was a member of the Football Development Committee that in 2000 recommended a radical, league-based format for the championship.

"Club football has been devastated in Tyrone. The league has basically stopped and the championship ground to a halt. I can't see this system surviving congress. In Tyrone, we tried to run a competition for clubs without their county players, the League Cup, but no one was interested. The county league is very relegation/promotion based and teams won't play without their county players."

The injuries that have allowed McRory the opportunity to experiment during Tyrone's qualifier progress have been less obliging in relation to the goalkeeping position. After dropping Peter Ward to make way for John Devine, the management looked on as Devine sustained a first-half broken collarbone that has ended his season.

"Peter Ward came in after the retirement of Finbar McConnell and he did reasonably well during the league and championship. But we had John Devine pushing him in training, keeping the pressure on - which was ideal. We decided to give him a bit of experience against Leitrim and he was first class so we left him there for the Derry match.

"Then he got injured, but Peter came in and played really well. Our problem now is more that we don't have that competition in training between the two of them and if anything happens Peter we're vulnerable."

Glad as they are to reach Croke Park at last, Tyrone won't be regarding tomorrow as journey's end. They know what they have to do to ensure a few more trips south this summer and to make up for lost time.